Bullingdon Club Britain: The Ransacking of a Nation

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However, it is important to put the often unsubstantiated tales of Bullingdon debauchery in perspective. No-one knows exactly how many members the club currently boasts, but in 2006 it was estimated to be as low as four, meaning the vast majority of Oxford students will complete their degrees without ever meeting one. That we allowed that tendency to trash restaurants to take power and trash the country may reveal more about our repressed sense of revelry and riot than we care to admit

To many of these politicians – the ones who have jumped on the conveyor belt leading from an elite private school, to Oxbridge, and then to Parliament – democracy is simply a game. Whether a former member of the Bullingdon Club or not, they share, or have learned, the mentality – seeming to have no real concept of the harm they can cause. Their only understanding of politics is through frivolous, theoretical slanging-matches at student debating societies. Economic growth has stalled, inequalities have widened, working life has become more precarious, and identity-based divisions have festered – while, in the UK and elsewhere, governing parties have insisted that others are to blame, typically immigrants and nebulous liberal agitators, for our sad situation.

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One-time child actor, a former pupil of the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture, Ralph Perry-Robinson discussed some of the exploits members of the club got up to for a book of essays but apparently got into so much grief from his former diners he no longer talks about it. According to the Cabinet Office, committee appointments are made by the prime minister on advice from Cabinet Office ministers such as Michael Gove, who are in turn advised by an advisory assessment panel. But we were also primed to react. An Etonian toff, inebriated by his own eloquence, appetent as a comic strip Billy Bunter, the ‘Boris’ persona expressed something about the English (if not the British) psyche. He was a national archetype, just as Donald Trump was to America. The brash New York real estate dealer and TV reality star recognised this and called him “Britain Trump”. And it’s not just the privilege and exceptionalism that worked for him, but Johnson’s genius at ‘improv’ and literary irony. In this, he carries more of the Oxbridge ‘Beyond the Fringe’, Private Eye and Monty Python mantle into politics than most of us would care or dare to recognise. A statement released on Thursday read: “The Cabinet Office has announced today that the prime minister has appointed Prof Gillian Peele and Ewen Fergusson as members of the committee on standards in public life, with effect from 1 August 2021.”

Pimlott, Tom Beardsworth, William (12 April 2013). "Buller, buller, buller! Just who is the modern Bullingdon Club boy?". www.standard.co.uk . Retrieved 7 April 2021. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ( link) Richard Alleyne (4 December 2004). "Oxford hellraisers politely trash a pub". The Daily Telegraph. London.The Climate Emergency Byline Times‘ coverage of the consequences of, and responses to, the climate crisis Fergusson, the son of a former UK ambassador to France, was a partner in the finance division at Herbert Smith Freehills from 2000 to 2018 and is now a non-magistrate member of the lord chancellor’s advisory committee for south-east England, according to his official Cabinet Office biography. Much like the Bullingdon Club, the infamed Oxford drinking society, Britain is suffering from the actions of an elite whose loyalty to self and the old school tie vastly outweighs its belief in the collective good.